Thoughts on Miraculous Ladybug : A Comment from YouTube I'm proud of about themes and Gabriel
and don't get me STARTED on Gabriel. the undercut and sabotaged any nuance this man had for 5 freaking seasons. every time he showed nuance or good feelings, they undercut it by forcing him to do something worse to snuff out any sense of sympathy or complexity, so we know who the bad guy and good guy is. yet they try to ham fist a last-minute redemption?!
don't get me wrong I actually DO want a redeemable complex Gabriel but its VERY confusing and just BAD how they handled it. at the very least they could have made it better if they literally said he was good and genuinely had good intentions to save his wife. after all she was 'missing' which means the plan was to use the wish to wake her up and she could come back using going missing as a cover. He wasn't raising the dead as she was in a magical coma.
he has a fix it as he knew if he lost that the ladybug miraculous would fix things and if he won, he could use the ladybug miraculous to fix any damage he did. by making 'hawkmoth' the villain it means people would have a target outside of the victims and the victims technically have to agree to the powers, so Gabe has the illusion of consent. and his plan to make a villain was to lure the ladybug and chat miraculous out of hiding by forcing them to activate to fix the problem since he couldn't track it down otherwise.
Overall, yes, it's not 'good' but his plan made sense in a way of minimizing damage for just wanting to save his wife. play up the fact they had no one to ask for help since the guardians were gone...from his view he was 'acting' as a villain. he had no training and didn't even have a properly translated book and wasn't chosen for his role.
just point to the fact Gabe has been using his miraculous of emotions wrong. he has been amplifying his own negative emotions to feel others negative emotions and forcing a fixation on the miraculous to get his victims to try to steal them. we have literally seen how even being a little emotionally off can have consequences.
Feast with fu was a rouge Senti-monster that sensed Fu's negative emotions, negative emotions that weren't even a part of why he made the Senti-being (which was to get him some snacks, Marinette's miraculous immediately timing down when she used it to separate Adrien and Chloe instead of attacking bubbler due to her jealousy, how Tikki's snack attack affected Mari when Mari transformed. and how Akuma Victims are prone to making dumb mistakes and you literally can't reason with them properly and act more fixated and aggressive.
they could have fixed the situation by just pointing out as a side effect from using his miraculous the way he was...his personality was literally getting twisted like his Akumas due to using mis miraculous in a way it wasn't supposed to be intended. Even more with how they mention using multiple ones can cause a strain on you and literally make you insane.
that way it would validate the times Gabe was reasonable or genuinely cared as the real him while still suing and explaining all the times he became SO much worse and cartoonishly evil.
while I would have perfered adrien actually being there in the finally..... if tehy just played up that mari being more willing to symapthize and see the villians genuinely needed help and weren't just evil was due to adrien's/chat's infleuence becuase that is adrien's strength in the show. his sympathy and ability to think deeper on motivations and not just punish and how he helped teach mari to not take things entirely at face value and be more patient.
heck the fianl battle could have worked if they played up the Mari and gabe are actually genuinely VERY similar. they have LOTS of parallels in the show...
like I think they were ging for a parallel to collector/the end of collector when mari went to him to give him the book she took(even if lila took it first) where gabe surprised us by him admiring ehr stepping forward and not being mad at her, even answering her questions and agreeing not to tell adrien when she asked him to keep silent. and a reminder about how gabe did give a genuine apology to adrien at the end of collector when he could have gotten away with not doing so since adrien DID steal the book from his locker...Gabe genuienly apologized in depth.
but because the show had spent most of the season undercutting any goodness in Gabriel again with no explanation to cover it like saying it was the influence of him going insane like his victims due to how he had been using his miraculous....it just feels unearned and messed up. even more if he was going to use the wish...why couldn't he had used it so Nathalie and the mom would be okay? if his plan had always been to use himself in case there was a price how would Mari have reacted?
like I still don't get why she trusted him at all. and because they never mentioned Gabe going insane or his behavior was due to how he handled the miraculous (like Akuma victims)
...it just comes across as Gabe just being genuinely terrible and abusive as him as a default for most of the show which makes the redemption/him fighting his choice WEIRD.
like please for the love of GOD WHY did they not just make it a side effect of using his brooch the way he did literally! it would have used the fact they primed us to sympathize/not judge what people do under the Akuma influence/in the deepest throes of their negative feelings because its prompted by them being twisted by the magic to at least give Gabe a BUFFER(for the audience).
It would make him 'fighting' so to speak, literally him fighting how he had twisted himself literally with the way he used the miraculous...like how people can fight drugs or the fought akums before. and the tragedy that Nathalie thought Gabe was just bad...not realizing her enabling him using the brooch the way he did twists someone she genuinely cared about.
like, it is easy to notice at judge the physical effects of the peacock broach, but the mental effect of the butterfly is HONESTLY terrifying/scary and has so many implications if their plan was to hint that original Gabe was more similar to Betterfly.
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I think it works even more because it would also explain why Gabe seemed different in this specific fight because he didn't know Adrien was chat noir. people often use Gabe's reaction to Adrien being Chat Noir to validate seeing Gabe as just an abusive horrible person...but what I've also seen is if Gabe actually talks or is around Adrien for enough time Gabe WILL soften to some degree...pointing to how Gabe does care for Adrien and that it grounds him more in his original motive/personality.
So, the change might be because Gabe has been amplifying his negative feelings so 'hawkmoth' is more focused and fixated on the miraculous and defeating ladybug and chat...finding out Adrien is chat makes the 'hawkmoth' affects take over more.
like how we saw Nate and others relax at times around certain people that breakthrough the delusion (like when Nate was actually convinced to leave Chloe alone to go hang with Marinette) but he snapped back into his villain mindset when Mari's actions echoed Chloe.
I think what's worse is it's not even a rewrite since all the blocks are THERE but the show just never acknowledges it.
